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Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss has sent a legal letter to Sir Keir Starmer to stop claiming she “crashed the economy”.
A cease-and-desist letter, sent by British law firm Asserson on Wednesday and seen by the Financial Times, claims the statements about her actions are “false and defamatory”.
The letter claims that the Prime Minister has caused “serious damage to her reputation” and even says that such comments may have contributed to her losing her seat in last year’s general election.
“Our client requests that you immediately cease and desist from repeating defamatory statements,” the letter states. “We sincerely hope that this matter can now be resolved and that you will refrain from causing our client any further harm.”
Starmer doubled down on his past comments on Thursday. The Prime Minister’s spokesman said: “I don’t think so [prime minister] is the only person in the country who shares that point of view in relation to the previous government’s management of the economy.”
Truss’s brief premiership in 2022 saw the pound fall and the UK’s borrowing costs rise after she oversaw a “mini” budget that included £45bn of unfunded tax cuts. After that she quit her job only 44 days in officealmost reversing the entire Budget.
Her intervention this week is likely to raise eyebrows in Westminster given Truss’s status as a staunch champion of free speech. Last summer, she supported Elon Musk’s free speech agenda and said on X: “I am appalled by the attacks on free speech in Britain and Europe. We cannot be truly free without freedom of speech.”
She has shown limited tolerance for criticism of her time in office, walking off stage after being booed at an event last year about her economic situation.
The roofHer lawyers accuse Starmer of making defamatory statements on three occasions in June last year when he said she had “brought down the economy”, which they say are “false and misleading” and “grossly defamatory and indefensible”.
The letter, first reported by the Telegraph, asked Starmer to stop making the claims and said the request was “made in the context of the basic levels of civility required among senior politicians”.
The request for Starmer from Truss comes as the former prime minister has been vocal on social media platform X in recent days about her support for Musk’s criticism of Starmer and the handling of historic grooming cases involving the sexual exploitation of girls.
Truss shared Musk’s tweets and commented that the billionaire was “right to accept them”.
